Quantum Dwarf
by StarGlider
Summary: Red Dwarf--Quantum Leap crossover. The Boyz discover a strange device and Lister finds himself in an interesting situation...can he fix his past and change his whole life?
1. The Leap

NOTE: Even if you've never seen or heard of 'Quantum Leap,' you'll probably understand the story alright. I try to explain stuff. I got sick of seeing like 90% slash fics for Red Dwarf, so this one IS NOT SLASH (no offence to slash writers--it's just mostly slash in this catagory, so thought I should do something different). Have fun....don't be too critical, it's all in fun.  
  
  
  
  
Quantum Dwarf  
____________  
  
  
  
"Attention all crew...attention all crew..."  
  
It was Holly, naturally, that woke Lister from his almost perfect dream...He, Kochanski, a nice little beach house in Fiji....  
  
"But, Krissi, we're the only ones here..." he muttered deliriously, the dream still gripping him.   
  
"Dave, I believe I asked for the attention of *ALL* crew members...."  
  
"....Wuh....? AHH!" He woke, for real this time, with quite a start. "Smeg, Holly, you sure know how to ruin a man's only escape-- "  
  
"Just shut up and listen to me, you gimp! ATTENTION ALL CREW! *UNIDENTIFIED OBJECT HAS BEEN DETECTED* Report to navicomp deck IMMEDIATELY!!!!"  
  
Swearing all the while, Lister threw on a coat over his PJ's and rushed out of his quarters. "*THIS* had better be a smeggin' dream," he mumbled as he jogged down the hallway.  
  
  
* * * *  
  
  
"So, let me get this straight...." Rimmer was rubbing his holographic chin thoughtfully, "...there's this one thing floating over there, and us over here coming towards it, and this one thing is--"  
  
"Rimmer," Lister cut in, "just shove your ego aside for five seconds and ask Holly to explain in English what she's tryin' to tell you."  
  
Rimmer huffed. "Fine, then--Holly, explain to Lister our situation in words he'll understand...."   
  
Lister bit his lip to keep from blowing his top.  
  
"It's quite simple, really," the computer said.  
  
"Well if it doesn't have anything to do with me or my nice ass, I think this meeting is adjurned," the Cat told them.  
  
"Would everyone please kindly refrain from oral speech and listen to Holly's explaination?" the mechanoid, Kryten, suggested from behind the group.  
  
"Thank you Kryten. Now, as I was stating--there's a thing resembling a kind of space-station just ahead of us....it seems, from an energy scan, that there's still power aboard the station, and a very strange device inside. I think we should have a look. It could benefit us if there so happens to be some mechanical things to scavange or maybe some food left in there somewhere."  
  
"Yeah, whateva'....I'm going back to Fiji--er, I mean, bed...."  
  
"Not so fast, Listy," Rimmer said. "Maybe the strange signals Holly's detecting is a savagely wrong experiment involving curry that went awry--perhaps it's morphed into a living humanoid and with it you'll find your eternal soulmate."  
  
"Rimmer," Lister said, "do shut up."  
  
"Touchy, touchy, aren't we....?"  
  
"Rimmer," everyone else said at once, "DO shut up!"  
  
He fell silent, nostrils flaring.  
  
"Fine, alright...." Lister caved, "let's go. But let's not be too long....I've got better things I could be doing, OK?"  
  
"Alright, then--StarBug ready to be boarded."  
  
Lister sighed. Nothing, especially this, some piece of space junk, seemed worth his time anymore. He'd never have what it was that he truly ached for. Only in his dreams....  
  
"Come on then, buddy," the cat urged, "maybe the device is a giant mirror or a new blowdryer!"  
  
Lister rolled his eyes, but followed his companions to the StarBug.  
  
  
* * * *  
  
  
The ride to the station was rather unpleasant for Lister. He was tired. He had been having trouble sleeping as of late...he figured it didn't really matter, anyway, wether or not he went to bed at 'night' or got up in the 'morning'. But all the same, something had been getting to him and he couldn't get it to go away.  
  
He wasn't sure if it was depression, or maybe loneliness, that bit at his mind without end. He felt stupid, too. It didn't seem like him to be so... well, sad. He hadn't felt this bad, he realized, since those days as third technician under Rimmer on z-shift. Not as depressed as he had been back then just after Kristine Kochanski had decided to break it off with him.  
  
And that was just it, Lister decided. Krissi. He could have been so much of a different person for her, to make himself 'good' enough for her. At least if he'd done that and caused her to stay with him instead of that macho boy Tom, or whatever his name had been, he would have at LEAST died a happy man.  
  
Better, perhaps, than living a life of loneliness and sorrow.  
  
But what did that matter? He could never have that one wish, so what did any of it matter?  
  
"Mr. Lister, sir...I couldn't help but notice that you seem to be a little...unhappy."  
  
"Well, gee...what clued you in, Kryters?"  
  
"Well, it might have been the lack of appetite, combined with the disorientation and overall--"  
  
"Kryten, I was just--" Lister began.  
  
"We're approaching the station..." Holly said, "prepare for landing sequence to begin."  
  
The craft began it's descent to the landing pad.  
  
"Aw, Listy...." Rimmer chimed in, "if it's that bad for you, I think I know of some medicine you could take..."  
  
"Yeah? What?"  
  
"Well I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw a little bottle of suicide pills left in the medical wing...." He laughed, with his most annoying, aggravating laugh.  
  
'Damn,' Lister thought, 'now Rimmer's getting on my nerves worse than ever, too. I'll never get through this with even half my sanity left....'  
  
The ship met the landing pad, and soon they were all stepping off the 'Bug and onto new ground.  
  
"The oxygen generator still seems to be functioning," Kryten observed. "And even the lights are all on around the station."  
  
They entered a kind of control room of the station. Lights and buttons flashed on the control panels, and screens showing the statistics of the station still blinked and scrolled. Lister was dumbfounded.   
  
"What's all this, then?" he asked, observing the perfectly functioning controls.  
  
"I'm not positive, sir. Let me see if I can hook up Holly to the central computer...." He began to examine the panel and started to punch in some keys. A minute later, a giant screen flashed on with Holly's face.  
  
"What is it, blokes?" Holly asked.  
  
"Can't you tell what this place is?" It was Lister speaking.  
  
"Hmmm. Let me try to connect to the other computer monitors around the station..." She blinked off for a moment, but reappeared again after a few seconds. "Aha! I've got a real treat for you if you just walk down the hall a bit...."  
  
Rimmer shrugged. "What's to lose?" He began down the hall, followed by the others.  
  
There were a few rooms along the hallway...a supply room, which seemed fairly full of boxes from what they could see; a restroom, a few other rooms that they weren't really sure of their purpose, and finally, a room at the end of the hall with huge, closed double-doors.  
  
Lister tried to open them. "Locked."  
  
"I think I can fix that," Holly's voice was heard, and there was a click, then a beep. "Try now."  
  
The door swished open easily. "Not bad," Rimmer said, "for a computer with less brains than a dyslexic mule."  
  
They all filed into the room. But as soon as they had entered, they all stopped abruptly for shock from what they saw.   
  
The room was gigantic. Everything seemed to be illuminated in a bluish light, produced by what seemed to be a huge computer screen, and it was hauntingly beautiful to Lister as he slowly let his feet guide him further into the room. There were even more controls— different ones— than there had been in the other room. Consoles circled around the room, too.   
  
In the front of the room, in the center of the wall, Lister saw the most fascinating thing of all. It was a bluish chamber, in a kind of cylinder shape, made of misty glass and shiny steel.   
  
There were three other chambers on the other sides of the room, too, but none of them looked as 'important' as the chamber Lister was watching.  
  
The gigantic blue screen swished into Holly's face. "Whatcha think, then? Nice decorating, or what?"  
  
"A bit different than 'Red Dwarf', I must say," said Rimmer, who was now also examining the shiny cylinder. "What's all this about?"  
  
"I don't know," the cat said, staring at his reflection in the steel, "but whatever it is, it was made with me in mind!"  
  
Holly looked thoughtful. "Well, it would seem that it's some sort of experiment that was started centuries ago. I'd also guess that it was to be kept quite secret, given it's all the way out here in space. But I think that, for some reason, it was abandoned."  
  
The four hovered around the room for the next few minutes; looking here, poking there, and feeling all the while curious.  
  
"I wonder what this does," the Cat wondered. He was looking at a very serious looking red button.  
  
"Don't touch anything," Kryten warned, "we have no way of knowing what all of this does!"  
  
"But do you think this is the device you were picking up signals of?" Lister couldn't stop thinking about the cylinder chamber.  
  
"I'd assume so."  
  
Lister observed the door to the chamber. There was a small white button next to it in the steel, and small words under it reading, 'OPEN'. It couldn't hurt, Lister decided, so he cautiously pressed it. There was a swish.  
  
"What on earth are you doing?"  
  
"Cool your smeg, Rimmer. I'm only taking a look."  
  
The door slid open.  
  
"This is BRUTAL!!" Lister exclaimed as he moved inside the chamber. The floor was like a grill, and there were lights lining the floor. He touched the glass on the door. "This is so high tech! I wish I knew what the experiment was about...it must have been a really big secret, then."   
  
Kryten looked at Lister. "It was probably started and abandoned way after the 'Red Dwarf' accident, so therefore you *couldn't* know about it anyway. But it could have been, in it's time, some kind of government conspiracy."  
  
Rimmer walked, his hands behind his back, and looked up at Holly. "What can we use from this prehistoric junk mart?"  
  
"All sorts of bits an bobs, I'd guess. Check the storage room for food and supplies, or even the stuff in this room could be salvaged and probably used somehow on 'Red Dwarf', to make it more high tech. What do you think, Kryten?"  
  
"I'm not sure. It's possible."  
  
"Hey Arnold," Holly said, "you might be interested to know that this station is able to support a hologram on it's own. There's a special chamber in here somewhere."  
  
"There is?" Rimmer looked around. "In one of these rooms, perhaps?"  
  
He looked at the other three chambers, interested.   
  
"Hey buds, this is neat! Ohhh! The reflection on this button is totally flattering!! But hey, let me get this smudge off..."  
  
"Cat...."  
  
"Ah! Off it comes..."  
  
"Cat!"  
  
"Just a little harder and..."  
  
"CAT!!"   
  
As the Cat pressed down on the button, the door to Lister's chamber flew shut.  
  
"Cat!! What did that button say??!" Rimmer, for once, looked almost concerned.  
  
"Uh, I don't know, man! Something like, uh... 'ACTIVATE ACCELERATOR....'"  
  
"Uh, guys...." Lister pressed his hands against the glass like a whining puppy in a pet store. "What just happened? Let me out."  
  
Kryten rushed over to the cat, looking at the button. "There's no 'stop' button!"  
  
A steamy mist began to rise in Lister's chamber.  
  
Holly pipped up. "Here...I'll try to override the command!"  
  
"C'mon, guys, this isn't very funny. What's happening to me? Let me the smeg out!" His voice was raised, and he banged once on the door.  
  
"Hurry up, Holly..." Rimmer said, watching helplessly as the mist rose all around Lister. "He's going to evaporate!"  
  
"Trying....I....I don't think I can change it! It's already begun the sequence, and I can't do anything!"  
  
"HELP! PLEASE!" Lister was screaming now, crazily pounding the inside of the accelerator.   
  
"Sorry, bud," the Cat shrugged.  
  
Lister's body was suddenly taken over by a vivid blue light, and....  
  
...he felt like his life, his body, was sucked into nothingness.  
  
Then he was gone.  
  
  
* * * *  
  
  
Blue....it swept away from his body, disappearing, and he was...was...where *was* he?  
  
He opened his eyes.  
  
'Am I...dead?' He blinked, then rubbed his eyes.   
  
There was a pink light now.   
  
'Pink? Why pink?' He looked up, then realized that it was coming from a lamp on the desk he was sitting at.  
  
A desk?  
  
He turned. There was a closet, too, and bunk beds.  
  
Bunk beds?  
  
He stood. Looking in the top bunk, he saw a collage of pictures on the wall that he recognized as his.   
  
'I'm not dead!' He realized, 'I'm back on Red Dwarf!!! But why is it so....different, somehow?"  
  
But, looking around, Lister found that it wasn't so much different, but instead, it was the way his quarters had *used* to look, waaay back when. Rimmer's clothes, shoes, and other things were neatly organized in the closet. His own things were put away--sort of—in a more orderly way than usual. Like he had made an effort.  
  
It didn't mean anything to Lister. Not, that is, until he looked down at himself.  
  
He was wearing a uniform.  
  
A dull gray Z-shift Technician uniform.  
  
He *was* on Red Dwarf, and there was something *very* wrong. He wouldn't be wearing that goofy uniform unless...unless...  
  
He was completely still. The shock finally set in.   
  
"It's like I've...I've gone...back in time...."  
  
He collapsed onto the bottom bunk. One of Rimmer's books, "How To Get Women by Hypnosis," lay open on the bed, which confirmed his sure suspicion.  
  
He was in his quarters, only 3 million years previous.  
  
He could barely breathe.  
  
"Ohhhh, smeg!"  
  
  
_______  
  
  
To be continued....  
  
  
  
AN Please excuse any inconsistancies....it's only for fun, you know? I may not post anymore, but I guess if you want me to I will. 


	2. Explainations, anyone?

Part 2  
  
  
  
  
For about thirty seconds, Lister forgot to breathe. Well....worse than that— he forgot *how* to breathe. But for those thirty seconds it was the last thing he cared about.  
  
Smeg, smeg, smeg.....  
  
He told himself that it wasn't possible to be 3 million years in the past. But then, he remembered all the other things that had happened in his bizarre lifetime and decided that he couldn't rule it out.   
  
He took one deep breath. Then was it true? *Could* it be true?  
  
Lister sat up on the bottom bunk, tapping his fingers on his knee nervously. There was no way that he could fathom what all this would mean for him. He would live his life over again from this point...he'd have to go through it for a second time.   
  
That, of course, was *if* he wasn't just dreaming.  
  
He closed his eyes and pinched himself on the arm. Nothing. He pinched harder. Then harder still. Still, nothing happened. He slapped himself on the wrist, then on the upper arm, and finally, in the face. He screamed from shock. But nothing happened.  
  
This wasn't a dream.  
  
'What am I gonna do, then? This is totally unreal!' He was staring directly at the wall opposite him. 'This couldn't get any worse....it couldn't.....'  
  
There was a noise, and Lister jumped up from the bunk. Someone entered, and they stopped, staring at Lister as he stood straight in front of the bunk.  
  
"What is it now, man, you sit on that tac I left for 'ya?"  
  
Lister said nothing. He just gawked. Because the man he saw standing before him was himself.  
  
The other Lister was gawking now, too. "What is it, then? What're you starin' at?" He waved his hand in front of Lister's face.  
  
"Uhhhhhh....."  
  
The second Lister shrugged. "Whatever, man. I'm goin' out." He grabbed his leather jacket from the top bunk and headed for the door.  
  
"...But...."  
  
"But what? You lonely? I see you've been readin' that bloody hypnosis book again...." He glanced at the bottom bunk and snickered. "I'm outta this crap hole." He walked out the door without another word.  
  
Lister still stared. It was like what he'd just seen was still struggling to be absorbed into his brain.  
  
He'd been cloned! Not only was it a time machine he'd stepped into— it was a bloody duplicator! There were two Lister! He—   
  
'You stupid gimp,' his brain scolded him, 'could you be any thicker? Try again.'  
  
"If I'm thick, then that means you are, too!" he said to his brain. Hey, that was it— he must be crazy! Why else would he see himself and then start talking to his brain afterwards?  
  
'Beeep! Wrong again! Though I don't think you're too far off with the insanity thing.'  
  
Ok, ok...he wasn't completely bonkers, he hadn't been cloned.....what else was left?  
  
He sat down on the bunk again, preparing for another round of wall watching, when his rear encountered the corner of the hypnosis book.  
  
Lister turned.   
  
There was the hideous book, the one he'd teased Rimmer about ceaselessly (along with a billion and one other things). He looked at it for a moment, then his heart began to race.  
  
Looking at his uniform again, he realized that it was not a third technician uniform like he had thought, but moreover it seemed to be one of slightly higher rank. His heart banged like a bat against his ribs as he read the name etched on the fabric. It wasn't his. It was...  
  
He choked. Not, it wasn't. It just *WASN'T*. It *COULDN'T* be.  
  
Like a zombie, he stood from the bunk again and trudged over to the sink, looking directly down at the floor as he did.   
  
He bumped into the edge of the sink.  
  
Gulping, he lifted his head— very slowly— to look upwards. He saw the sink, the faucet, then the bottom of the mirror that was just above it. He looked at the reflection in the mirror.  
  
He saw a face with whiny looking eyes that screamed sarcasm. There was a mouth that seemed to be forced into a constant smirk, and a nose that could house a small family of elephants in each nostril, and maybe a couple of tigers when they were flared. Big ears jutted from the sides of the face that Lister was sure would lift his whole body from the ground if he were to wiggle them. This face was one he knew all too well.  
  
It wasn't his at all. It belonged to Z-shift 2nd technician Arnold Judas Rimmer.  
  
"Holy smeg....."  
  
Lister fainted.  
  
  
* * * *  
  
  
Rimmer looked nervously to Holly again. "Anything?" He was twiddling his thumbs pensively as he waited for the computer to respond.  
  
"Still trying to retrieve him, Arnold."  
  
Rimmer huffed and turned away. Kryten was punching things into one of the consoles, and the Cat was busying himself with his comb and portable mirror. Rimmer frowned.  
  
The stupid cat. This was his fault— lots of things were his fault, and every time something was his fault it was the same. He acted like nothing had even happened and went on with his agenda (which was either sleeping, eating, or preening). It hadn't bothered Rimmer so much before when the Cat did something daft, but now it involved something a little more vital than a broken plate or a careless mess.  
  
There was a very real possibility that Lister was gone. Forever.   
  
It'd been nearly an hour since they'd lost him. And there wasn't a trace left of him.  
  
'He must have evaporated!' Rimmer had thought initially. He'd stared in horror as they'd tried to bring him back, helplessly watching the accelerator as if it would make his 'friend' reappear.. He found that he actually felt bad for Lister, for once. He'd thought so many times that life without Lister would be preferable, but now the prospect of never seeing his rival again scared him.  
  
How could Rimmer go on without another real 'human' to talk to? It was crazy! *He'd* go crazy!  
  
"Wait, blokes, I've got something!"  
  
Rimmer jumped. Kryten and Cat looked up at the screen.  
  
"I've tracked David.....but you're not going to believe where I found him."  
  
"What?! Where is he?" Rimmer asked in an exasperated tone.  
  
"He's back .....on Red Dwarf, it seems."  
  
Kryten stepped forward. "He's back on Red Dwarf? Oh, how silly of us! We'll just go back to the ship and Mr. Lister will be there. No worries!"  
  
Holly let out a kind of a nervous computer laugh. "That's not quite what I meant, Kryten. He's back on Red Dwarf, yes, but he's not in the same time as we are. He's about 3 million years in the past."  
  
"What the smeg are you saying? That this thing is a time machine?" Rimmer folded his arms.  
  
"Of sorts, yes."  
  
Rimmer turned white. Kryten would have, too, had he been able to do so. The Cat wasn't even listening.  
  
"So.....what do we do, then? Is there anything we...." Rimmer trailed off.  
  
"The thing is," Holly went on, "we can't just hop in and find him. It seems that the time destination of the accelerator is, in a way, completely random. Wait— I'm going to scan this computer information document I've just found in the main database...."  
  
A moment passed.  
  
"Wow....that's a fine bit of news."  
  
"WHAT? WHAT'S happening, Holly?"  
  
"I just learned that this thing— the whole station— is a secret experiment that was tested on earth and, after a few quirks were worked out, it was rebuilt in secret in deep space. The goal of the experiment was time travel, but like the first it developed a fluke and the time destination became random."  
  
Rimmer was growing annoyed. "But *what* fluke? You mean the fact that once you send someone off through time, you can't get them back ever again and you don't know where they're gonna go?"  
  
"They *can* get back, but let me explain, won't you? In the first experiment, the man who was sent through time could only go *back* in time, and within his own lifetime. But every place he ended up, he had to fix something in time to make wrong things right. Like, saving someone or making them do something that would change their life. After he did that, he could move — or 'leap', as they called it— to another point in time. So maybe if David does something good where he is currently in time, he will be lucky enough to 'leap' back here again."  
  
There was silence for a time as everyone— except the cat, who was curling up in a cozy ball on the floor— pondered the situation.  
  
"That's all fine," Kryten said at last, "but how will Mr. Lister *know* that he's supposed to do anything, or *what* he's supposed to do, for that matter?"  
  
Holly swayed her head. "There is one way to contact Dave, but only one, and you may not like it much."  
  
"Get on with it," Rimmer urged.  
  
"Well, we can use the Imaging Chamber over there to transform someone into a hologram and hook them up to Lister's brain waves so he can see them. There's this thing called a Hand Link that transmits information from me as I find it, so the hologram can tell Lister and help him out a bit. I'm afraid that's all I really know."  
  
"That's very confusing of you, Holly." Rimmer thought for a moment. "Well, Kryten, you're the natural choice to go in the Imaging Chamber. You'll help Lister out the most, I think, being that you're more logical than me or the Cat." Rimmer unfolded his arms and placed them at his sides.  
  
"I'd agree," Holly said, "but this station is low on power as it is and it'd use up less power if we used someone who was already a hologram." She glanced at Rimmer. "We need all the power we can get, to keep the database up. We are getting a stable amount of power from the generator, but we wouldn't want to throw it accidently with an overload. If we lose it, we lose all the information on Lister's situation."  
  
"Me?" Rimmer gulped. "Me? I can't help Lister— I don't know anything about....stuff like that! What am I supposed to do?!"  
  
The door to the Imaging Chamber opened, and a small colorful device— the Handlink— appeared in hologramatic form in Rimmer's hand.  
  
"We'll use your current power source to save power on the station." Holly nodded. "Go on, then, into the chamber."  
  
Rimmer walked slowly. "But WHAT DO I DO??!"  
  
"All you have to do, Arnold, is inform Lister of his situation and tell him information as it appears on the Handlink. It's all very simple."  
  
"Yeah," he mumbled, "Simple to a computer that has wits equal to a rabid goldfish."   
  
He walked into the chamber.  
  
"You can come and go as you wish, from Lister's time back to ours. If you need to come back here, press the button on the handlink."  
  
"Yeah, alright, then."  
  
"Ready?"  
  
"Good luck, budddy," called the Cat, barely waking from his nap. "Bring me back a souvenir!!"  
  
"See you later, Mr. Rimmer, sir."  
  
Rimmer nodded from within the chamber, and the door swished shut.  
  
There was a 'whoosh' sound, and he saw nothing but white.  
  
  
  
-----  
  
...To be continued....  
-----   
  
  
  
AN I know there will be inconsistencies, so sorry if there are just too many to cope with in this fic. To those who reviewed this— stop reading my mind! =) J/k. Heh, until next time.... 


End file.
